Importance of character uniqueness in RPGs

[rusty_shackleford]

Bit of a theoretical thread, just wanted to discuss some RPG theory.

"uniqueness" for lack of a better word to describe the way your character differs from my character. Your dude vs my guy. The importance of character "building" in a way that actually matters, but not to be confused with autistic "buildfag" games that focus on very minor differences that have little impact on how the actual game plays out.

For example, how different is your Geralt from my Geralt in Witcher? Is this important? Would the ability to make a more varied Geralt make it a better game? Perhaps the ability to make your Geralt distinct goes beyond stats on the character sheet to choices you make in the game — as the Witcher games tend to be rather narrative heavy and the way our Geralts are different depends not on how we "build" our character but the choices we make when interacting with the world itself?
Therefore following from the last part, the importance of so-called "builds" could possibly be defined in the difference in which they allow us to interact with the fictional world, which is why despite games like Wrathfinder having (supposedly) a very wide range of "builds" they don't seem to make that big of a difference on the game itself.

Perhaps RPGs are missing a link between character building and "narrative building"(again, for lack of a better term)? Can you think of good counterexamples? I could see someone reflexively saying "stat/skill/etc checks", but that becomes more like setting your train car on a specific train track and racing to the end, there is too much "narrative building" lost. For an extreme version of this, see Age of Decadence.

[MadPreacher]

It's impossible to have character uniqueness in a CRPG as you are limited to what the designers decided to make. LARPing doesn't count.

[The_Mask]

I feel that this is you gingerly approaching a contemporary issue of game design not meeting up with any decent writers. And the lack of any decent writers, as well. The reason why I'm saying this because I predict that everyone will give plenty of examples of pre-2012 RPGs, few contemporary ones, and the bemoaning of lowering of standards will begin.

So I feel you need to restrict the conversation to, say, the past 5 years.

For example, I feel that A Legionary's Life and Loop Hero, do a good job of maintaining that triangle between character, world and story within that world. And those would be fairly recent titles, so I don't fall into the trap of selling NOX or Planescape: Torment for the n-th time.



Now, if you want to discuss WOTR from this angle, there is a LOT I can ***** about. In the sense that if we're going to particularly focus on that title, and ***** about why it looks the way it does, and it plays the way it does, and it has the options that it has when it comes to classes (or "classes", if you want to be sarcastic) there is a LOT to unpack there. But you have to say that you want to focus on that, and it wasn't just an example.

[rusty_shackleford]

Is there an example of an RPG that has reverse skill checks, such that the "build" of your character responds to your choices rather than your choices responding to the "build" of your character?
It doesn't necessarily have to be entirely one or the other.

[The_Mask]

Well, in that regard, there are two ways to prove this: bonuses or maluses. There are very few games, in general, that will completely change your class, build or playstyle depending on your choices. And, there should be. The player should be challenged to face the consequences if their actions in that way, as well.

RPGs in the bonuses category are probably many. Off the top of my head NEO Scavenger will reward you with super-vision, if you start with a vision-impaired character, and you get enough money/reach a point in the game alive to correct the issue.
I also know that in Academagia, if you choose to start as a very fit and athletic person, with pretty much 0 inkling towards magic, you can eventually find ways to learn schools of magic that an otherwise general practitioner of the magical arts won't have such an easy access to, basically changing your "class".


I think in the malus category is, unironically, every game Josh Sawyer ever made. Because he's unafraid to cut your Priest or Paladin and make them Fallen, if you decide to be ********. And then force you to either reconsider your ways, or continue with a different class.


This one subscribes to what MCA said at one point, where he said that the Player is vain. Either because they expect a power trip, a good story or just because they consider themselves the paying customer, and thus think they ought to be catered to: it is *hard* to mess with their vision of the power trip they had in mind, without them having quit on your game, and then (even worse) dumping a poor review. Most people are snowflakes/vain, and won't swallow that pill down so easily.
Should that totally be a thing in a perfect world? Yes.

In any case, your question is good. I hope more people dump more titles here. I'd be interested in balsy titles like that, too.

[rusty_shackleford]

The example of a fallen paladin is a good one, thanks.

[Acrux]

such that the "build" of your character responds to your choices

Any game that has use-based skill progression would technically fit that definition.

[GothGirlSupremacy]

If the game has you follow a proper character like Geralt, then you're probably going to have to deal with playing within the boundaries of Geralt's character. I don't like when they let you go wild with an established character and do radically different **** from what you'd expect of them. If I'm playing Garrett from Thief, I expect to get my *** absolutely kicked if discovered by a well-trained guard because Garrett is built for infiltrating, subterfuge and taking. He's not a mystical warrior-assassin that is doing all sorts of crazy **** like in those goofy Dishonored games. That's also what makes him cool and easy to get invested in because he has those shortcomings and thus makes Thief a memorable game because of how different you need to approach it.

If the game allows you to generate your own character, then more creative expression is to be expected but I also think they need to have the player still respect the rules of not only the world at large but even what their class/role can and can't do. Swiss army knife characters are boring and there's nothing unique about a character that can be whatever the situation demands. In fact, the whole notion of players wanting a power trip should be actively stomped into the mud and instead replaced with weighing pros and cons, drawbacks of decisions made, and what you are capable of doing vs. what you are not. This inherently promotes the player to approach situations with their character's strengths and limitations in mind, thus naturally causing them to roleplay.

A big problem of buildfagging is how the metagamer will always try to optimize the fun of experimentation out immediately and instead lay down a single path to follow. If you're playing a character that can do everything the game has to offer and ends up becoming the typical master of arms, wizardry, thievery, assassination, *******, and anything else between then what reason is there to ever replay or revisit? Having to impose challenges of restraint never sat well with me.

[ERYFKRAD]

I don't really get hooked on build uniqueness. In an ideal world I'd rather have characters distinguished by accomplishments than builds.

[rusty_shackleford]

A big problem of buildfagging is how the metagamer will always try to optimize the fun of experimentation out immediately and instead lay down a single path to follow. If you're playing a character that can do everything the game has to offer and ends up becoming the typical master of arms, wizardry, thievery, assassination, *******, and anything else between then what reason is there to ever replay or revisit? Having to impose challenges of restraint never sat well with me.

I've noticed this has been slowly replaced with a party that can do everything rather than a character that can do everything. Bit of a sleight of hand that makes it less obvious, but there's no real decision being made when your party covers all possible obstacles presented. e.g., Wasteland 3 was like this, I think they added some "hard mode" but it doesn't address the core issue. Deadfire was similar with the party member skill bonuses.

[rusty_shackleford]

I don't really get hooked on build uniqueness. In an ideal world I'd rather have characters distinguished by accomplishments than builds.

I think even 'buildfags' agree on this, because the most distinctive aspect of Wrathfinder is not your class but your mythic path, the thing that has the least amount of choice after being picked.
But this is in fact quite linear in an AoD fashion: you pick a mythic path, which then makes many of your decisions for you. The more interesting part is picking choices that lead up to your mythic path, a character being made by their choices rather than their choices being made by their character.

[ERYFKRAD]

Perhaps RPGs are missing a link between character building and "narrative building"(again, for lack of a better term)? Can you think of good counterexamples? I could see someone reflexively saying "stat/skill/etc checks", but that becomes more like setting your train car on a specific train track and racing to the end, there is too much "narrative building" lost. For an extreme version of this, see Age of Decadence.

I am not sure how good of a counterexample this is, but I recall nwn having a bunch of modules dedicated to playing a cleric of tyr. Narrow as that is, from what I heard that module also had plenty of use cases for cleric ****- like casting spells during dialogue to confirm the truth of stuff being said and all that. I think stuff like this qualifies for that missing link of build choice and narrative choice?

[Segata]

If you're playing a character that can do everything the game has to offer and ends up becoming the typical master of arms, wizardry, thievery, assassination, *******, and anything else between then what reason is there to ever replay or revisit?

The aim of the metafag is precisely not having to replay games, just beat it once and consoom next game.

[Tweed]

This goes back to choice and consequence and the best choice and consequences are made at character creation, not at false dilemmas or yes/no answers in the middle of the game. Underrail is my go to example just off the top of my head and in particular whether or not your character chooses to use stealth. Stealth will determine how you play the entire game and what you can and cannot do. To further expand on that, people bitched in the Underrail discussions about wanting the level cap to be higher and not being able to cope with having to specialize their characters.

[rusty_shackleford]

There is, to some degree, a creeping cancer in RPGs that has led to some thinking that dialogue full of "[Speech 450/37] Wow gee wiz I'm smart" as the height of RPG design. I have trouble replaying a lot of newer RPGs due to this, it feels very much like a CYOA book. And to be honest there are a lot of really good CYOA books that still hold up, like Middle Earth Quest(TolkienQuest) from ICE, much better than this crap peddled as an RPG.

The aim of the metafag is precisely not having to replay games, just beat it once and consoom next game.

A good example here is the reflexive response to suggest people play a very certain build in PST. Being told how to play the game and how to "see the most content" is certainly not the way the game was intended to be played.

[rusty_shackleford]

Is there an example of an RPG that has reverse skill checks, such that the "build" of your character responds to your choices rather than your choices responding to the "build" of your character?
It doesn't necessarily have to be entirely one or the other.

After thinking on this for a while, I'd say the games that best express this type of design are Gothic 1 & 2. You frequently make choices that shape your character, rather than your character shaping the choices you make.
Elder Scrolls games get close, but very rarely does one path get closed because you took a different path. Your skyrim-dude is probably very similar to everyone else's skyrim-dude if you did all the content(Note: I never got past ~20 hours in Skyrim, so a bit of an assumption.) Not so for Gothic.

[Norfleet]

[Cedric]

I don't really want to get into the topic right now, just want to remark that it seems that zoomers have been gaslit, so to speak, into believing outfits and character appearance customization are far more important than any mechanical in game differences.

Funny to me because I never change my appearance in games from the default. I don't look at my character, I look at my numbers.

[Emphyrio]

The aim of the metafag is precisely not having to replay games, just beat it once and consoom next game.

I replay games because I want to play on the highest difficulty and get a perfect score.

You replay games because you want to see the 5-10% of content the game locked you out of.

We are not the same.

[J1M]

The idea of spending 40 hours to replay a game so I can try a different set of combat mechanics is very off-putting. Especially in an age when combat tuning is outsourced to players via scaling difficulty modes like "Mythic+" or "world tiers".

I want the ability to PLAY with the mechanics of a game. I want to be able to swap around skill points or whatever the character building choices are called in a particular game. In town-only is fine.

I don't care at all if someone else picks the same talents as I do. If there are actually a million choices so each player is different then they must be pretty bland choices. Also, this is ignoring the reality that a double-digit percentage of players will just look for a recommended build. (And strangely a single-digit percentage of players will solidify a zeitgeist by repeating flawed information they've never tried as though they are an expert.)

[maidenhaver]

This is what Traits are for.

[maidenhaver]

I don't really want to get into the topic right now, just want to remark that it seems that zoomers have been gaslit, so to speak, into believing outfits and character appearance customization are far more important than any mechanical in game differences.

Funny to me because I never change my appearance in games from the default. I don't look at my character, I look at my numbers.

I think this is true. I've seen a lot of videos for oblivion or elder rings, with goofy ******* potato heads on their characters for lulz, but you know they spend hours playing dolly dressup with the sliders, and this is the origin of tism to ****** pipeline. Game devs are genociding gamers. Real chargen is sidelined, even to the point now there are "no jew or greek" (races) "no male or female" (sex) but **** and schnoz sliders. "Yo what's your spellcaster's stats?" "Uh, his nose is -273."

[Klerik]

[Lhynn]

Theres a clear example of this to be found in Tale of Wuxia.

You play a blank slate character for the most part. How you manage your time and what choices you make will shape your characters personality and relationships, while also dictating his skills, combat or otherwise.